


less the depth of grief

by nymja



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Tumblr fill, spoilers for 8x2, this is going to be non-canon in like 20 hours but WHATEVER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:54:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: In the final days of Winterfell, Ned Stark visits his children.





	less the depth of grief

**ned.  
** He does not wake until his bones are interred in the belly of Winterfell. He does not leave the realm of the dead until a Stark returns.

 **bran**.  
His son has not moved for hours, the snow collecting in his hair, his furs, his eyelashes. Ned does not know what to make of the stillness, of the expectant way his hands are folded into his lap. His Bran is not his Bran anymore, no longer the boy with leaves in his hair and scabbed knees.

“You can say something, if you’d like.” His son is staring out into the distance, eyes unblinking.

Ned does not know who he speaks to, wonders for a moment if it’s to the wind or the trees or the snow itself. What lay beyond the wall never met with what he sees now as a life decidedly less complicated than the lives that came after it.

Bran’s gaze breaks as he blinks, head tilting although he does not look in his direction. “I would hear it, whatever it was.”

Ned cannot speak. It is not the way of things. The dead do not speak. They are the snow, the air, the weirwood, the earth. He is not Ned Stark because it would not be right to be Ned Stark. Not proper, even to his children. It is what separates the dead, the truly dead, from what is born beyond the wall.

Bran leans back into his chair. “I see.” One of his hands leaves his lap to press against the white bark of the tree. “I know better than most of what it is to be gone.”

His son–who is no longer his son, because he is no longer Ned Stark–stares into the loneliness of the Godswood.

He thinks of the boy who climbed. Of the babe in Catelyn’s arms.

The wind howls.

Unlike his other children, unlike Robb and Rickon, Ned knows he will never see this one again.

“Yes,” Bran agrees. “Only the North will grieve for what was Brandon Stark.”

Ned is the North.  
Ned will remember.

 **sansa**.  
She is her mother’s image. Her hair falls over one shoulder, cheek resting upon the flat surface of the desk. To her side, there is a tallow candle flickering, a scrap of parchment, a well of ink. Her thumbs and fingers are stained with it– a different kind of blood, for a different kind of war.

Her lips part slightly in sleep, words that Ned does not understand. Of all his children, she is the one he least understands. He thought her gentle. Maybe once she was. But now time has proven him wrong, and he knows he has failed her.

He waits by her side, until she wakes. Until she rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand and dons her armor of furs. The North has found its way into every stitch of her clothing, into the set of her jaw and the rigidity of her spine. The others may battle, may bloody, but she provides and prepares.

Sansa Stark, more than any of his other children, understands how the winter comes.

 **theon**.  
There is no anger in Ned as he watches his former ward walk through the gates of Winterfell. Ned was not here when the walls of their home were desecrated and the land salted, though he knows that the last time Theon Greyjoy stepped foot inside those gates it was to conquer it. But it is not for the dead to hate. It is not for a father to refuse forgiveness.

Theon has paid dearly for his passage. Now his mouth stays in its pressed line, his eyes move from place to place as if he is waiting for the walls to enclose around him. It is only around Sansa that he allows his guard to lower enough for an embrace. Ned sees in him the terror he must always overcome for the rest of his life, numbered though it is.

Ned watches on that night, the final night, as he shares salt and bread with his daughter. As he allows Winterfell to become his home once more. When dawn breaks the terrors of the night, he sees Theon nock an arrow, standing in front of his daughters, his sons.

He has allowed himself to sow.

 **arya**.  
She stares out into nothing, her chest rising and falling in faster measure than that of the man beside her. Were Robert’s bones interred beside Ned’s, he imagines the man would have more than one thing to say about their children’s choice in sleeping arrangements.

But Ned only cares for one thing, and that is the silence from a list of names unsaid.

“Not today,” Arya pleads into the dark.

His youngest daughter closes her eyes, and a new list of names begins:

“Jon. Sansa. Bran. Gendry.” She stops for a moment. “The Hound.”

Not today, Ned wishes he could promise his fearless, brave girl.

 **jon**.  
His son stares into the face of his mother. Ned watches, as Jon Snow tries to find something in the carved relief of Lyanna Stark. A nose, a chin maybe. Something of himself in the stone. Something that feels like home.

“I’m still Ned Stark’s bastard,” he informs his mother’s bones.

Lyanna does not speak at his side, but Ned feels her watching. Feels her sadness, her joy. Her desire to let him know he is part of something beyond the fire and blood of his birth. That he is pack because he is hers, because he is Ned’s.

He’s a prince, raised from a promise.  
But also a son, loved regardless of it.

Ned knows his son will save the North, until the watch has ended.

 **ned.  
** The night is dark and full of terrors.  
And Ned Stark’s bones begin to move.


End file.
